Artists grapple with doubt and shame

By robert nelson

July 9, 2019 — 12.05am

Brent Harris' 'Borrowd Plumage 3 (Noli Me Tangere), 2007 (detail).

VISUAL ARTON VULNERABILITY AND DOUBTAustralian Centre for Contemporary Art, until September 1

No, Charlie Sofo did not ransack the Crown Jewels. His little installation of gems on a plinth at ACCA was produced by sucking on lollies till the lump was about to disappear. The tinier they became, the more luminous, polished and precious-looking.

Imagine spitting out art like that. What was Sofo thinking? Crackpot thoughts, no doubt - like his impulse to create a small grid of photographs of textiles.

With the help of the title, Reference Points (16 Photographs of a Nipple), you see that each rectangle has a small bump in the middle that then strikes you as ever so slightly obscene. The artist must have been eyeing off your cardigan for all the wrong reasons.

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Sofo's imagination is consumed with paradoxes - such as in a staircase of shelves with found soccer-balls, potentially setting up a chain reaction if any should roll. The doubt about their stability produces a frisson, as in the video Low Notes, where Sofo muses on inconsequential things that nevertheless seem revealing - like his shape in the bathroom mirror when flossing.

Doubt is integral to artistic method

You don't doubt the artist, because you understand that he doubts himself. Sofo arrives at perverse outcomes after judging that their madness makes perverse sense. All artists ultimately believe in themselves but only after doubting the wisdom of their vision. Doubt is integral to artistic method, which always follows dubious pathways.

Cherine Fahd spells out her fears in 'Wasting Time'.Credit:Courtesy the artist

Even a resolved artist with a robust symbolic aesthetic like Rosslynd Piggott (with a current retrospective at the NGV) registers her doubts. Is the work grand and boastful or is it thin and fragile? Is the work too literal or too obscure? Yet because you sense that Piggott agonises about it, you come away thinking: wouldn't it be great to resolve such questions in paint or glass!

This exhibition at ACCA takes us deeply into doubts that preoccupy artists. Curated by Max Delany, On Vulnerability and Doubt not only examines the kind of aesthetic doubt that artists wrestle with, but links this uncertainty with social unease and private shame.

Andrea Buttner's 'Beggar' series.

We're all afraid of many things, some of which culture has set upon us. In a sequence of posters photographed in gloomy locations, Cherine Fahd captures some of these wracking points, as in Fear of Being a Bad Mother or Fear of Wasting My Time or simply Fear of Failing. Any ambition brings you closer to failure than if you'd resolved to remain complacent. The doubts multiply with the vision.

The truly vulnerable, however, don't even have the luxury of failing, because they have nothing left to fail at. Andrea Buttner depicts beggars in an austere, graphic manner that draws upon the recurrent theme of the beggar in art. She sees an analogy between artist and mendicant, both similarly placed in the awkward position of appealing to the public with needs that can be interpreted as shame.

Shame emerges as a key theme between vulnerability and doubt. The connection is explored in a rich essay by Justin Clemens, who identifies several paradoxes from childhood experience through to Kafka. Clemens' narrative could apply to many of the artists, including Brent Harris, who lyrically abstracts contact with ambiguous orifices. According to Annika Kristensen, Harris was inspired by the moment when the doubting Thomas pokes his finger into Christ's wound to verify that he is the same Jesus as the one before the resurrection.

Linda Marrinon, 'Rock with underpants', 1992,Credit:Andrew Curtis

The psychodynamic narrative of shame would also explain aspects of Tala Madani's unsettling paintings and videos. One video shows a mob grappling with a mobile penis, hoisting it overhead, whereupon the idol stands upright. After a tense moment basking in admiration, the phallus thrashes its worshippers, as if allegorising the treacherous power of the elected over the electors (or the erection over the erectors).

There is much sexual indisposition in Ambera Wellmann's pornographic paintings and Linda Marrinon's sardonic works on paper and sculpture - especially her Rock, a bluestone block wearing underpants.

But Archie Moore finally banishes shame, sharing his Indigenous skin by means of T-shirts bearing a photographic image of his chest. Corny but compelling, the image undoes its own doubts, giving you hope that an act of generosity helps overcome centuries of hurt.